Climate Change in the Biodiversity and Forest Strategies in Greece Using Discourse Analysis and Text Mining: Is an Integration into a Cost-Efficient Natural Resources Policy Feasible?

Abstract

Climate change poses major threats to biodiversity and ecosystems. National policies on environmental issues address the problems created by these threats and set targets for their mitigation. In Greece, the National Biodiversity Strategy and the National Forest Strategy analyze, among others, the issue of climate change and how it is related to biodiversity conservation and forest management. As biodiversity and forests are interrelated, common strategies may be similar, overlapping, or opposite. In the present research, the issue of climate change is investigated in the two national strategies for finding out if an integration of policies is feasible. Such an integration may result in a cost efficient and smaller set of solutions that should be determined and may have important results in the funding of natural resources policy. Discourse analysis and content analysis with the text mining approach were used to compare the two policy texts. The results are both methodological and applied. Methodologically, text mining is confirmed in the present research to enhance the objectivity of discourse analysis, and it is recommended to complement it. In terms of the way the two policies deal with climate change, it is found that a future integration of a Biodiversity and Forest Strategy in Greece for climate change issues is relevant and may be applied.